Point of veiw in The Sheep Thief

The opening of this short by Asif Kapadia is overwhelming. Under the burning sun, from an Olympian high angle shot, we see a young boy lying on the glowing sand on the one side of two wheel-tracks. After the title-sequence we cut back in time. Now, at ground level, we see the boy hiding in the dark city night. In front of a house, a sheep is tied up. The boy cautiously crawls out of his hiding-place, unties the sheep and grabs it. The theft is soon discovered and the boy, closely pursued by two men, runs through the narrow alleys of the city carrying the animal in his arms. When one of the pursuers reaches out to grab the sheep thief, the latter suddenly stops and hits him with a primitive weapon. The pursuer is hit in the eye and falls to the ground. The sheep thief finds a hiding place under a house, but when he is about to pick up a coin somebody lost in the street, he is discovered by the second pursuer. The punishment for theft is cruel. The boy gets a stigma burnt onto his forehead. His wild hair is cut and he is left to his fate on the sand outside the city.
Later, we shall take a closer look at the ways in which Kapadia establishes the point of view of the main character. The establishment of POV is a critical moment in any movie, but as I will try to show, the solution to the problem in The Sheep Thief is particularly refined. I shall also briefly situate the film with respect to genre